Sunday, 3 March 2013

52 FLOWERS: moschatel

When we came to Suffolk ten years ago the first thing we did was to walk the territory. We stepped out of the door to find what plants grew in the fields and marshes, shingle banks and heaths, when they flowered in their wayside and secluded places. And in the years that followed, we would make small pilgrimages to sit amongst them, tune into the season, to the turning of the year. Under the goat willow, beside the angelica, alongside the seakale.

We still do.

Today we went to witness the first emergence of the year, a band of snowdrops in a small clifftop wood of yews and sycamore. They mark the beginning of the flower year after a winter of semi-hibernation. The following piece was originally in the Plant Communications chapter and is about a moment when these visits first began. It may appear a short and seemingly insignificant entry in this decade-long log, but, like the snowdrop, it describes the power of small things at a time of shift . . .

18moschatelmarsh lane, suffolk

Before we came we imagined this house where we now live. We wrote down what we wished to find waiting for us down a
Suffolk lane, the shape of the cottage walls, the colour of the gate, its glasshouse with geraniums and washing line open to the seawind. And then we discovered it amongst apples trees and blackcurrant
bushes, jackdaws on the roof, sea in the distance, space all around, a ragged hedge of
hawthorn and elm, a wood and marsh beyond, a barn owl flying past at
twilight, and paths that lead in all directions.

I am walking on one
of these paths today in March, exploring the first flowers of the season.

Past the reedbeds now faded gold
and the silhouettes of silver birch, past a grove of large leaning ash and
oak, the footpath leads between pasture and barley fields, a line trodden by
cantering horses and walking people, jumping stoats and fleeing rabbits, by the
slow stride of pheasants and the small scurry of field voles. There are spikes
of bluebell coming up either side of the path and great stands of ground ivy
and lesser celandine. As I follow the curve in this circular route, I stop suddenly in my tracks, and look down at my feet. In amongst the arrow-shaped foliage, under a stand of spindly wych elm, I can see another kind of leaf,curvy and wavy and soft, and a tiny flower I have
never seen before but immediately recognise from years of reading wild flower
guides.

Adoxa
moschatellina. The flower is the only one of its kind. A plant that so defied
categorisation, botanists had to give it its own house. A five
sided cube-shaped green flower, sometimes fragrant, depending on the time of
day. Sometimes called the town clock because of its shape. It is a delicate plant
and no more than six inches high. The spinney floor is strewn with these
tiny green clocks, and its collective vibration is palpable, so strong it has
stopped me in my tracks. The flowers are unusual in so many ways. And yet their
name means “without glory”.

You
are without glory, they say to me, as I stand amongst them on this
path.It is a shock this moment. I
realise that no one I have ever known in this life knows I am here. I could
disappear in this moment, standing by these small flowers, and no one would
notice.Everything that once defined me
has vanished: the people who once shared my history, the books that are no
longer in print, the by-line that has gone.No longer categorised by property, job or social position, what remains now is what always remains - the mysteriousness of the earth. Myself, Mark.

I am at the beginning of 2003. We
are starting again. Our plant communcations, once closely entwined with other
people, with teachings and sessions, with our inquiry into medicine flowers,
have come to an end. From now on the communications will be with the land, with
this solitary path before me.I am
without glory, a nobody in the world, but somehow this realisation fills me
with an excitement I can hardly name. I do not have to prove myself to anyone anymore. No one will tell me how I should or shouldn’t be. And in this
shocking moment I feel the whole universe open up.

I am in my own house at
last!

It is the beginning of a new
territory. After many years of moving, we will grow roots here andmake ourselves at home.Mark will grow the collection of seeds from
our travels in the glasshouse conservatory.It is a signature year and this small plant is making me aware of its
resonance and meaning: how does it feel
to be without glory?

I am walking down a flower track. It is a completely other track than all those I have walked so far, along the green river
paths of Oxford, the dusty red trails of the Arizona desert.On either side are the harsh realities of modern
country life: gamekeepers, guns, dogs, sulphuric acid, piles of fertiliser, dead
foxes, razed flowers, derelict farm buildings, dying trees, a low and hostile
frequency. But on the track there is everything you could ever want to
feel: lightness, possibility, joy, beauty, freedom, colour, the high and
vibrant frequency of the heart.

Time
to walk it.

The flower clock faces the four
directions, north south east west, with a fifth that looks up at the sky. The
flower path of England stretches before me:this is how you walk it.

You walk in four directions and look all ways, and you look up into the sky. You see the weather moving in the clouds, how the
light is always changing and the starry constellations always moving, the moon
that waxes and wanes. As you walk you come to know time.The moving time of the earth. You know the
time of the fox calling, of the song thrush singing, the time when the
red butterfly feeds on the ivy and the goldfinch on the dandelion. You smell snow
and mist and rain coming in on the wind, and the scent of sweet violets as the
winter turns. You see the spring coming into the hedgerows as they ribbon the
land; hazel, cherry plum,blackthorn,
crab apple, hawthorn, dogwood, dogrose, elderflower.

You make a pilgrimage
to the tumulus at the time when the daffodils dance, when the alders are dark
and tasselled, when the stags roar. You know which berry feeds which bird, and
why the clover feeds the bee. You know time from the flower collective that
appears and disappears, with the neighbourhood trees in their leaf and fall, seeing how everything connects in time, As
you walk, this is the time you keep: with your feet, as you walk, with the
rhythm of your heart, as you walk, in time with the rabbit and the stoat, the
sun and the star, and the sound of the invisible wren. This is the path of the
heart.

I am without glory, but I walk
a glorious path. I just have to keep walking. Holding our virtue and grace
and intelligence, our own heart frequency, is what the flowers feel from
us.Our recognition of beauty, our knowledge of time, our memory of how everything comes and goes and then returns. The moschatel doesn’t care whether you have friends or
have succeeded in business, or own a big house. None of these things
concern it. The self that walks among these flowers has nothing to do with the self that jostles for fame and glory in the human world.Human glory counts for nothing on the flower
path: here your unusual presence is everything, your participation is
everything. Your communication is everything.

This is what adoxa is saying on this March day. You are here, you are here, walking by me on this track. It is
important you walk this track. Walking it keeps it alive. I am here, I am here, sings the chaffinch.His song is keeping the world alive. And
something extraordinary grows inside your being when you feel this. You realise
in this mysterious moment there is another path to walk on this earth, apart
from the ones that appear on the map and atlas, and you have just stumbled upon
it. A path that goes by the big trees and the golden marsh, a green track,
strewn with spring flowers, with lesser celandine and ground ivy and a tiny
insignificant plant with curly leaves and five faces.

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about this blog

Welcome to my blog - a collection of pieces written for collaborative platforms and grassroots media, including The Dark Mountain Project, This Low Carbon Life, Transition Network, EarthLines and the Grassroots Directory.